Volume 5 Issue 8, August 2021

Locally activating prodrugs through targeted irradiation — a new concept for concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

A polymer coating made from cosmetics-based ingredients can be applied to diverse surfaces to capture airborne droplets and mitigate the transmission of infectious respiratory diseases.

Selective cross-coupling at either of two similar halide substituents in a dihalogenated substrate can be achieved by controlling the speciation of the active palladium catalyst.

The early 1980s witnessed the report of a molecular ruthenium complex active for dehydrogenation of alcohols and hydrogenation of carbonyl compounds. The ligand used represented a new paradigm that influences homogeneous catalysis to this day.

Finding the best approximation to the exact functional of electron density is the central challenge of density functional theory (DFT). In 2005, Zhao, Schultz and Truhlar paved the way to the development of approximate DFT functionals that can offer universally accurate treatment of different chemical systems and properties.

Late-stage C–H functionalization of complex molecules has emerged as a powerful tool in drug discovery. This Review classifies significant examples by reaction manifold and assesses the benefits and challenges of each approach. Avenues for future improvements of this fast-expanding field are proposed.

State-of-the-art synthetic methods regularly encounter challenges associated with cost, safety and/or efficiency when proposed for large-scale applications. This Review highlights recent applications of novel reactions/technologies (e.g. photoredox, electrochemistry, C–H activation, reductive coupling and flow chemistry) on the process scale.

This Review identifies competitive advantages and drawbacks of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalytic hydrogenation, as well as enzymatic catalysis, photocatalysis and electrocatalysis, for CO₂ reduction to methanol.

Enantioselective transition-metal-catalysed nitrene transfer is a powerful approach to access valuable amines. This Review describes recent catalyst designs for asymmetric aziridinations of C=C groups and aminations of C–H bonds.